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John Harbaugh joins Bill Belichick in calling for widespread use of replay

ORLANDO — Bill Belichick has a kindred spirit when it comes to instant replay. It's John Harbaugh. The Baltimore Ravens coach is in full agreement with Belichick and the rule change proposals that the New

ORLANDO — Bill Belichick has a kindred spirit when it comes to instant replay.

It's John Harbaugh. The Baltimore Ravens coach is in full agreement with Belichick and the rule change proposals that the New England Patriots have submitted to expand the NFL's replay system.

The Patriots are most notably proposing that any play would be subject to instant replay review and that cameras are installed to cover the boundaries of the field to maintain consistency with the footage available to be reviewed.

"We're on record, in Baltimore, the last four or five years, of being in favor of putting everything in instant replay that can be put in instant replay," Harbaugh said during the AFC Coaches Media Breakfast session on Tuesday. "It's our feeling that the technology has caught up with the game in a lot of ways.

"Sometimes, we lag behind the technology a little bit. And we should. You should come to change slowly and do things for the right reasons. I think the league is right in doing that. But it's about time to recognize that when the fans have a better view of the game than the referee does, it's time to put the referee on the same playing field as the fans, and you do that through the technology. They have great ideas and ways to do it."

Owners voted Tuesday for a measure that will allow officials to maintain communication with the officiating command center at NFL headquarters in New York. Yet it is hardly a given that owners will expand replay in the fashion that the Patriots proposed, allowing for any play to be reviewed, given the history of instituting instant replay changes with incremental steps.

Also, proposals forwarded by teams generally are tougher to pass (requiring 24 votes) than those brought forth by the league's competition committee.

After originally instituting replay in 1986, the review system was scrapped after the 1992 season amid concerns about prolonging games. A limited version of replay was re-instituted in 1998, sold on the notion that it would be used primarily to correct obvious big plays.

Over the years, tweaks have added plays that are allowed for reviews and a measure was passed to mandate a review of all scoring plays and turnovers that allowed coaches to save challenges for those type of situations.

Now the Patriots' proposal would fundamentally take the system to another level — or as Belichick contends, to simplify the system.

"I'm not proposing more challenges," Belichick said. "I'm just saying that as a coach, if you want to challenge a play, I think you ought to be able to challenge it, and why does it have to be limited to the four or five pages in the rule book that can be challenged, and now this year there are more proposals to amend that, probably because of one or two plays that happened in the league last year.

"I think, eventually, each year, there's going to be some other situation, circumstance, that comes up and we're going to want to add that. It's four to five pages of plays that challenge procedure, and every year it gets amended. It's hard to keep it straight. I mean, I can't get it right. We have a coach that's responsible for that on game day. I don't know how the fans can get it right; the coaches can't get it right. The officials themselves, it's challenging. I think it simplifies it."

Given the history of incremental changes, is it realistic to expect the measure to pass?

"I have no idea," Belichick said. "But there's a proposal in there from the competition committee that's like a page and a half long about amending a fumble recovery on the field of play and all that. It's hard to understand all the circumstances that have to be in play to challenge a call. It's extensive."

Harbaugh can relate to Belichick. And like the Patriots coach, he sees the play from the NFC title game where San Francisco linebacker NaVarro Bowman's strip was non-reviewable as the fuel for one of the current proposals forwarded by the competition committee — and an example of knee-jerk reaction.

"I think everything should be reviewed," he reiterated. "If not, work back from what shouldn't be reviewed. Don't work out from what should be reviewed. Because right now, all we do every year is we add things for review, because a play happens like the San Francisco play and we say, 'Oh, boy, that's a loophole that should be reviewed,' so we add it. That's the tail wagging the dog."